ivory billiard balls

[bensdad]

E-Bay has loads of these, though not cheap: http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dl ... iard+balls
Have any makers tried re-turning them into mounts?

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Cripes, $162.50 with 3d 04h 42m to go and 3 bids. Somebody wants that ball!
A mammoth ivory tusk is around $700, last time I checked. Much more economical.

[Patrick D'Arcy]

The cat's ou tof the bag......

A mammoth ivory tusk is around $700, last time I checked. Much more economical.

Well... it's that for a piece of mammoth ivory tusk anyway. Big Lots isn't stocking it these days, although it might be a good avenue for them to persue

PD.

[PJ]

Have any makers tried re-turning them into mounts?

Leo Rowsome is one.

[Jim McGuire]

The billiard balls work well for turning. I've turned some over to Alain in the past. The red ones are identical to the white ones; just watch out for cracks. They turn up so often (but sometimes pricey) on eBAY that you might want to source them yourself through a newspaper ad.

[uillmann]

I have turned loads of them. About twenty years ago, I bought a big basket full for 15 bucks apiece. The best ones made nice mounts, but very checked ones were useless. I found it difficult to match color and grain when using cue balls for pipe mounts. If old balls became ovoid and were sent back to the company to be retrued (by spinning in an abrasive cup) they got hot and eventually cracked badly. These balls were very plentiful at one time, the Brunswick Company alone turned out 60 thousand balls a year at its peak. Usually, exceptionally good quality ivory was used (scrivelloes) which were long, straight and very round in its natural cross section, and 3 to 5 balls per tusk was the norm. Nowadays, there are collectors willing to pay up to 200 for a very clean ball. Ivory pricing has gotten out of hand of late, and tusks for pipemaking are hard to come by other than through ebay. Two out of the last 5 tusks I bought were cracked longitudinally, and were unusable for pipe mounts, but were fine for other uses. Elephant is far superior to imitation ivory as far as turning goes and also for shock absorbency, but is inferior for rapid temerature changes and extremes. Billiard players were advised by ball manufacturers to allow the balls to warm in a sunny window before play in order to minimize cracking if the hall was cold.

[tommykleen]

Is mammoth/mastodon more resistent to cracking? Seems the beasts had to deal with some extremes in their day, although they didn't have to go from the (sub-zero) car to the pub, did they.

I expect more extinct ivory to be available in the coming years.

tommy "tusker" kleen

[Patrick D'Arcy]

I expect more extinct ivory to be available in the coming years.

Yeah, global warming ROCKS!

PD.

[uillmann]

From what I can tell, Siberian ivory is mostly controlled by the Russian mafia. It is skyrocketing in price, and the quality and availavility is going down.

[David Lim]

I recall hearing a few years ago that South Africa was trying to get International Laws changed, so that it could cash in on it's vast stores of elephant tusk.

Anyone know how they got on?

David

[Kevin Popejoy]

You guys are killing me. First off, reworking or altering ivory artifacts is against CITES conventions. Secondly, if you do said reworking and put together a set of pipes with it you'll not be able to transport it legally across borders nor would you be able to sell it. You need CITES certification to do those things which of course you would be unable to obtain on reworked ivory. Now, if you're making a set for yourself and don't plan on taking it across the border...then by all means go for it. On the other hand, if you plan to sell the set to some unsuspecting gimp or take it through customs, you probably should consider retaining suitable representation.

Kevin

[uillmann]

I suppose pipemakers who would like to work in ivory would have to use whole tusks for instruments and not plan to travel abroad with them for sale.

[David Lim]

First off, reworking or altering ivory artifacts is against CITES conventions. Kevin

CITES - The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna.

http://www.cites.org/eng/disc/how.shtml

It controls international trade, not the working, reworking or altering of listed species.

And of course it should have our full support.

David

[billh]

Technically David Lim is right, CITES doesn't _directly_ cover re-working...

BUT, re-working otherwise exempt material (antique "over 100 years old") can cause it to be subject to CITES. CITES also prohibits cross border sales and most cross-border commercial activities.

The main thing, as Kevin and David point out, is that even "legal" ivory requires non-reusable CITES permits for each border crossing. For some countries, you need one permit for export and a complementary/reciprocal import permit, and for all CITES signatory countries, each time you cross a border you need a separate permit.

The short answer is that you can't (practically) cross borders with pipes containing such material, at least without major hassle. You can't legally sell pipes containing such mounts across borders either. Note that the US is hardest of all because it also has its own even stricter 1989 legislation covering the trade in elephany ivory, and also similar marine mammal protections.

Mastodon and mammoth ivory of course is exempt from this, since the animals are already extinct. To answer tommykleen's question, "sort of"; because mastodon and mammoth ivory comes pre-cracked! Seriously, mammoth and mastodon in sufficient quality seems to have nearly disappeared from the market at the moment. There are also concerns that some of the "mastodon"/"mammoth" material on the market is actually antiqued elephant, I don't have any statistics on that though.

Bill

[Jim McGuire]

CITES takes a tough stand on people reworking ivory since it simpler to paint the whole industry black than for CITES to manage/make determinations related to situations where the future of the live elephant, etc is not related to the work at hand - for instance, the reworking of an old, old billiard ball. They don't have the budget or the experts or the bandwidth to cover the situation.